City Council considers purchasing toilets

Martha Carter puts a blanket up between two shopping carts for privacy and then a bucket beneath her. This is how she relieves herself at night.

She then takes the bucket and empties it at a nearby drain and pours a bit of water down as well, to flush the waste away.

“There’s just no place to go,” said the 56-year-old homeless woman who sleeps on the streets of East Village.

Soon, the longtime problem of public urination — an urban aggravation growing with downtown’s homeless population — may be eased.

The San Diego City Council is looking into the purchase of a half-dozen or so public toilets that would be placed around the city’s downtown, including the East Village, where many of the homeless gather.

It’s directing downtown redevelopment officials to set aside about $700,000 for the possibility. The homeless applaud the move. Those who live downtown applaud it, too.

It hasn’t been a very pleasant scene — or smell — for much of anybody.

The other day, in broad daylight, a man urinated on the side of a building on J Street. When done, he zipped up his pants and moved on.

“Of course, we’ve seen it,” said Richard Law, who lives in East Village. “You cannot live here and not see it.”

The new toilets, if realized, “certainly address a real problem,” Law said.

The area’s homeless problem is only getting worse. A recent count by the Regional Task Force on the Homeless estimated that 8,500 people are homeless in the county, up 7.8 percent from the year before.

Bringing more public toilets to downtown has been talked about for a long time.

In 1999, then-Mayor Susan Golding called for the installation of 16 of them. She actually had been lobbying for them since 1992, when she was elected. They never materialized.

A San Diego County grand jury also called for additional public facilities in downtown in 2005. Another grand jury did so again just a month ago.

Right now, in all of downtown, there are 10 public restrooms. If more are in place by next summer, going to a Padres game might not mean heading through streets of stench.

The East Village homeless say that they can go relieve themselves at a couple nearby social agencies during the day. There are also two portable restrooms that were put up by private citizens, with the city’s blessing, to help with the problem in 2008.

But, to get to others, it takes a bit of a hike.

Local businesses have cut off access, for obvious reasons. They’d have homeless people coming in to use their facilities regularly. At just about every business, you see signs: “Restrooms for customers only.”

Some are locked.

“I guess you could say the time is ripe and the streets are ripe, if you know what I mean,” said Jennifer Douglas, executive director of Girls Think Tank, a human dignity advocacy group in San Diego that’s been pushing for the public toilets.

“Every city grapples with this,” she said. “There’s a need and it’s 24/7.”

Her organization did research and believes that the type of public toilet in use in Portland, Ore., offers the most benefit. Called the Portland Loo, it’s solar powered and easy to maintain.

It’s relatively cheap, too. One toilet costs $87,500, said Douglas. By comparison, a public restroom to be built in Little Italy — which will be considerable larger — has a $900,000 budget from the nonprofit city agency the Centre City Development Corp.

But it’s still early, when it comes to seeing any of the Portland Loos on, say, 14th and Island.

The City Council gave the CCDC 120 days to go talk with different community groups and come up with a plan of action.

One problem: CCDC doesn’t perform maintenance. It can only suggest city redevelopment funds for building or purchasing facilities. So key details need to be worked out, including most importantly where the money would come from to take care of the toilets.

San Diego City Councilman Kevin Faulconer, who represents downtown, would like to see more public restrooms.

But he wants to make certain that community groups have input on ideas, such as where the public toilets should be placed. The funding for their care needs to be addressed, too. “It has to be done thoughtfully and in a fiscally responsible manner,” Faulconer said.

The East Village Association Business Improvement District hasn’t taken a position on the idea just yet, said David Hazan, the president.